Armor of God: What's the Deal with the Belt of Truth?
Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth… (Ephesians 6:14).
I don’t know about you, but the last thing I think about when I start putting together an outfit to wear is the belt. For me, the belt is kind of an afterthought—the last thing I put on. But when dressing for battle, Paul doesn’t consider the belt an afterthought at all. It’s not accidental that Paul begins describing our spiritual armor with the belt of truth. It’s an essential part of the spiritual armor.
Modern warriors understand how important the belt is as they dress for battle. It carries the essential equipment they will need to succeed. In addition to my .40 caliber Smith and Wesson, my police belt carried extra magazines of ammunition, handcuffs, pepper spray, rubber gloves, a radio, as well as my PR-24 nightstick.
Modern warriors are no different from warriors in Jesus’ day. They all understand the significance of the belt when they dress for battle. Such a seemingly insignificant part of their gear is actually an essential piece of equipment. When you dress for spiritual battle every day, you need to begin with the belt of truth. It’s the first piece of equipment Paul describes in his description of our spiritual armor.
The first piece of armor a Roman soldier would have put on was the belt. Paul says, “Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth….” As the apostle Paul wrote these words, he was a prisoner of Rome. Day after day he was being guarded by a Roman soldier. He would have been intimately familiar with the gear of a Roman soldier, and he had plenty of time to ponder and reflect on what he saw as the changing of the guard happened over and over, as one Roman soldier ended his shift and another was assigned to him.
As a Roman citizen, Paul would have seen Roman soldiers throughout the course of his life in full battle dress with a helmet, shield, and breastplate. As Paul was writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, looking at this Roman soldier and his Roman armor, suddenly the Spirit started to move in him.
His mind flashed back to Isaiah 59:17: “For He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on His head….” The eyes of his understanding were opened to see the reality of Jesus our warrior King. He is our Shield, our Sword, the Helmet of our Salvation, our Breastplate of Righteousness. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Paul made the connection that the Roman soldier’s armor is a picture of our spiritual armor—the armor of God. He put pen to paper and wrote in Ephesians 6:13-14:
Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth.
The number one thing Paul says we have to put on is the belt of truth. The King James Version of the Bible says it this way: “Having your loins girt about with truth.” No one talks like that anymore in contemporary English. Loins are simply the strongest part of your body from which you can generate the most power. Anybody who knows anything about powerlifting knows you don’t just bend over and pick something up, you will blow out your back. Rather, you want to use your legs and hips.
A Roman soldier learned to fight with his hips because they were the strongest part of his body. Paul is saying when you have belted your waist with truth, you have never been stronger in all of your life. This piece of equipment wasn’t a little two or three-inch belt, it was a four to six-inch wide leather belt.
Consider the analogy Paul is making. There are several purposes for this belt. First of all, it was for support. Roman armor was heavy. The soldier would have worn this armor all day while standing for a long time or marching for long distances.
As a member of the Kansas City Police Department, I would often be on security detail as a member of the SWAT team. Sometimes we would stand in one place for hours, and the longer we stood, the more our backs began to ache. Roman soldiers had a very thick belt to give them back support. Paul calls our belt the belt of truth because when we have anchored our lives to the truth, it gives us back support. We need a strong backbone if we’re going to stand against the enemy.
Not only that, but when a Roman soldier strapped on his belt, there were little tassels hanging down in front of the groin. They were weighted tassels meant to give him some protection from the low blows all men hate by softening the blow or deflecting it altogether. Think about it, whether you’re a man or a woman, most of us have received a low blow in life from the devil. You know what I mean–a hit below the belt, a cheap shot. The devil is really good at cheap shots. Roman soldiers were equipped with a heavy leather belt with weighted tassels in front of the groin to protect them from those cheap shots, those hits below the belt—just as the belt of truth protects you from the devil’s below-the-belt cheap shots.
The belt held the sword securely to the soldier’s side so the sword was always in the ready position, and he was always ready for immediate action. The belt also held some other essentials like food and water. The Roman soldier’s belt secured the breastplate in place. Without the belt, the breastplate would have bounced around any time the soldier ran into battle, galloped on a horse, or even moved very quickly. Without the belt holding the breastplate in place, the soldier would have been greatly hindered in battle.
Next, as the soldier prepared for battle, he would tie up his tunic. In Bible times, men didn’t wear britches or pants, they wore tunics or skirts that came down to the knees, if not the ankles. Modern fatigues worn by today’s soldiers were still centuries away. When Roman soldiers wanted to move quickly, they would secure their tunic to their belt to keep their legs from being encumbered. They would literally take their tunic, roll it up, and then tie it in their belt. Yes, they went into battle wearing what looked like a mini-skirt! That’s what Paul had in his mind’s eye as he wrote, having girded your waist with truth. Paul means to tie up your tunic in your belt of truth and prepare for battle!
The Center and Anchor
This belt was the center and the anchor of all of the Roman soldier’s equipment for battle. Everything else may look more important, but apart from the belt, nothing would have stayed in place or remained attached. In the very same way, Paul is teaching that biblical truth must be your center and your anchor. When you center your life on God’s truth and you anchor your life to His truth, you put on the belt of truth.
We can know the Truth—the Truth is the Son of God, the Word of God.
In some ways, the United States is a nation adrift because our country has lost its truth anchor. So many people are floating aimlessly through life because they no longer have absolute truth as the center of their lives. There are a lot of people who debate whether we can know the truth. Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth….” Jesus is God’s Word that “became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14).
Here’s the point: You cannot know truth apart from knowing a Person, and that Person is Jesus Christ. Jesus is more than true. He is Truth!
Not only is Jesus Christ truth, but Jesus said in John 17:17 as He prayed to the Father for us, “Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth.” Truth is found in the Living Word—Jesus—and the written Word—the Bible. We can know the truth because truth is in the Son of God, and the truth is in the Word of God. Like Jesus, the Bible is more than true. It is Truth!
Anything in this world that contradicts the Son of God or contradicts the Word of God is a lie—it is not truth. Until you thoroughly believe that for yourself, you have failed to put on the belt of truth and you will be easily overcome by the enemy. Without the belt of truth anchoring your life, you will easily believe the enemy’s arsenal of lies. When you believe the lies of the enemy, he will lead you into captivity.
It begins with that lie straight from the pit of hell that is completely taking over the mentality of our society that says, “There is no absolute truth, you can’t know what the truth is. You define your truth for you, and I’ll define my truth for me. There are no absolutes spiritually; there are no absolutes morally. You decide what’s right for you, and I’ll decide what’s right for me.” Not only is that kind of thinking unbiblical, it is illogical and completely hypocritical.
There is no human being on the face of the planet who really believes practically there are no absolutes. The moment somebody says, “There is no absolute truth,” they have just made an absolute statement. Hypocrite!
Some people say there are no absolute laws morally or spiritually. Everyone can define their own truth. Yet take that mentality into the doctor’s office when you need surgery. If I hear my surgeon say as I’m about to be taken into surgery, “Well, it doesn’t really matter where I cut today. I think I’m going to cut over here, it’s close enough”—I’m coming off that operating table! I want a doctor who has some absolute truth.
If you go to the pharmacist with a prescription to fill, and you hear the pharmacist say, “It doesn’t really matter what pills you take. Here, take these pills, they’re just as good as the other ones,” you are not going to take those pills. You want a pharmacist who possesses absolute truth. Not just any pill will do. If I get on an airplane and I hear the pilot say, “It doesn’t really matter which button I push today on this control panel, they all basically do the same thing,” I’m getting off that plane! I need a pilot committed to some absolutes.
The reality is, the world is controlled by absolutes. In the very same way there are absolute truths mathematically, there are absolute truths morally. Five plus five will always equal ten. Gravity is true whether you believe it or not. It doesn’t change. It’s irrevocable and irreversible. What goes up will come down. Whether or not you believe it doesn’t change the fact that it’s true.
The entire universe is controlled by absolutes, and everyone knows it. It’s completely illogical to think there are absolute truths for everything except what is true spiritually and what is true morally. Yet people will argue against such absolutes morally and spiritually because it’s really a matter of authority.
Like Lucifer before them, they want to usurp God’s authority because to do otherwise would mean they would have to acknowledge He is God and they are not. In refusing to submit their lives to God, they make themselves a slave to the god of this age. Remember what Jesus said in John 8:32, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” It is God who wants to set us free. It is Satan who wants to take us into captivity.
Truth is defined by the Living Word and by the written Word.
To live victoriously against the enemy you must begin by putting on the belt of truth. The Living Word is Christ; the written Word is the Bible. It’s the Word of God that defines what is true and what is not. The Word of God is the absolute standard of reality. The Word of God rules and it alone is our final authority. This is the mindset and confidence required to cinch up the belt of truth tightly lest you be taken captive by the enemy.
Why is this so important? Let me illustrate it this way. If you ask several people to tell you the time, you could get a variety of answers. Especially back in the days before everyone had cell phones and people actually wore watches to know the time. Now that everyone carries cell phones, watches are sold more for a fashion piece than a timepiece. Watches often don’t agree on the correct time. One person’s watch might be a minute fast while another might be two minutes slow.
We could argue all day about what time it is, but we never really had to. There’s an absolute standard of time in Colorado. It’s the government’s atomic clock that sets the time for the entire nation. Cell phones always reflect the same time, because they are all using the same standard of time.
Truth Is Timeless
In our current culture, people argue about what is true because they are all using their own standard when God Himself is the standard. People argue about things like the definition of marriage. The reason they can’t all agree is because they are all using a different standard. Jesus, who is the Living Word, quoted from the Bible, the written Word, when asked a question about marriage. In doing so, He gave us God’s absolute standard of marriage in Matthew 19:4-5, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?”
Here, you have God’s definition of marriage, and every other standard is false. It’s not that the truth can’t be known. It’s that the world has decided it hates the truth. But denying the truth of God’s standard of marriage no more changes the truth than denying the reality of gravity. Truth is timeless, it never ceases and it never changes. Every person you know can deny it, but it doesn’t change the reality of the absolute truth of God.
People have argued for decades about when life begins in the womb. Once again we have an absolute standard of truth found in Psalm 139:13,16:
For You formed my inward parts; you covered me in my mother’s womb. …Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.
God saw you in your mother’s womb as a human being even before you had a fully formed human body. He wrote about your days and recorded them in a book in heaven before you had lived any of them on earth. Once again, God has not hidden the truth from us.
The problem for us today is what Jesus said in John 3:19 (New International Version), “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light, because their deeds were evil.” Because of the rebellious hearts of the fallen sons of Adam and the fallen daughters of Eve, people naturally run to the darkness instead of the light. In so doing, they align themselves with the rulers of the darkness of this age. Instead of being free, they find themselves in slavery to the enemy.
As members of Adam’s race, we were created in the image and likeness of God. Yet the arrogance of modern-day people has created a “god’’ in the image and likeness of them. We are so self-deceived and deceived by the enemy that we actually think we have the authority to redefine truth. We can no more define truth than we can command the earth to stand still in its orbit around the sun. We can’t define truth because God alone is the standard of truth—but it is essential we discover the truth.
Here’s the point: It is up to us to adjust our watch to match the standard, not to try to get the standard to match our watch.
We have to adjust our lives to God’s standard instead of trying to distort God’s standard to match our lives. There is one place you can go for the absolute standard of truth and reality. That’s why God has given us the Bible. It’s the gold standard measuring rod of reality for what is true. Truth is not determined by your vote, my vote, the majority vote, or public opinion. It is not the opinions of your friends or a TV talk show host or a celebrity or whoever else you are listening to. God alone is the majority, and He defines truth. His truth is irreversible and completely unshakable. You may hate the truth, you may make fun of the truth, you may choose not to believe the truth and choose to ignore it, but in the end, truth is still the truth.
You need to tune in to God to get the truth and His standard of reality. I’m not going to try to change God’s standard to match my life as so many people try to do. I’m going to change my life to match God’s standard. That’s what it means to put on the belt of truth and to stand.
You are ready to go to battle because now you have a firm foundation from which to wage war—you have absolute truth. Satan doesn’t want you to know the truth because knowledge is power. Therefore, he will attack and distort the truth and try to get you to deny the truth. He’ll do anything he can to conceal the truth because he does not want you to have it.
Christ brings you liberty, power, and victory!
He’s a liar by nature, and his lies hold you in captivity and slavery. It’s Christ who brings you liberty, power, and victory. Jesus says in John 8:32, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Satan doesn’t want you to be free—he wants you to stay in captivity.